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Good evening, ladies and gents, and welcome to my report of my first real magic show. I would like to share with you the experience, the lessons I’ve learned and the effects I’ve used. I hope this is the right part of the forum to post this on, but if not, I trust the moderators will relocate this post to its rightful place.

The Idea behind the Show
In my day to day life I’m a scientist, with some ten years of experience as a popular scientific lecturer. So, when I realized I could capture an audience’s attention for two hours just by speaking about ribosomes and other scary stuff, I decided to take this one step further and see what I could do with some real magic tricks on the stage. My first aim was to create a lecture about the scientific studies done on paranormal claims, and sprinkle it with magic and mentalism tricks in-between, to entertain, astound and drive the message home.
Since I had no previous experience with magic, I just started reading all the magic and especially mentalism books I could find, and experiment on any poor soul that seemed to glance in my direction. Early on I got fixed on Bob Cassidy’s books, and I’m still going through the bible that is Corinda’s 13 Steps to Mentalism. I gathered a trick here, a trick there, and somehow I built an entire show along with a powerpoint presentation in just a month of study and practicing. It’s not a lot of time, but I already knew I was a good performer on stage, so I practiced, crossed my fingers and believed it could go well.

The Place
A week before the performance I went to see the place and set things up with the owner of the small pub. We agreed that I will perform mainly on a small stage, with most of the lights in the room pointing in my direction. He had no microphone to give me, but since there was going to be no music during the show I figured it would go alright. That was my first mistake, and probably the worst of them all.

The Show
I arrived early – an hour before the start. I used the time to set up the table on the stage, complete with the gimmicks required by the show. I also talked with a few people, and asked one to collect folded billets from people, with a short statement about themselves. More and more people showed up, and at around 20:40 I finally got on stage and begun the show.
The first thing that leapt to my mind was that there were more than one hundred people, and most sat on the floor packed tight. There was no free space to move between the people and engage directly with them. The second thing that I immediately noticed was that because there were too many people, about a third of them couldn’t see the stage properly. What this meant was that I had to step down from the stage and perform about 10 centimeters from the first line of spectators… who were pretty much arrayed before me and around me, to watch me at every angle. And to add insult to injury, the lights created a big shadow of yours truly on the wall, my hands included. Talk about ouch.
So… it wasn’t perfect, but the show had to go on.

My first trick was to convince them that I was sending them subconscious messages through the presentation. I asked a girl in front to give me a double-digit number, and swamied it to a card which I gave her, and asked her to read it aloud. It was her number, of course. And just about everybody were confident she was a confederate of mine.
Lesson: I should’ve done it in the Corinda way – ask somebody to stand up, and point out to someone else. Maybe a beautiful girl, to add a kick to it. That way, less people think it was orchestrated.

Second trick: still in the vein of convincing about subconscious messages, I asked everyone to imagine two items, and divined what they were. That worked nicely, and more than 90% of the audience actually did think of at least one of the items.

Third trick: after some talking and explaining about the subconscious and all that, I moved on to telepathy. Told them about cold reading and roughly how it’s done, then asked for the box in which the billets collected earlier were kept. I used the One-Ahead method to look at a folded billet (on which the person’s name was written), ask that person to stand up and deduce from his stance / muscles / facial expressions what he wrote in the billet. Of course, I had to use my wife as the first ‘volunteer’ whose billet I first took from the box ‘by chance’. I then performed the cold reading on two other fellows.
Lesson: This was one of the effects people really remembered, since they believed they saw raw talent at reading people instead of a trick. However, many thought my wife was a confederate (which she was) – and the same about the other two volunteers. I probably should’ve begun with taking a billet, reading the name to myself, pointing at someone I saw writing a billet earlier, and really trying to guess for the first time. Or maybe I should’ve stolen a billet from the box somehow. Maybe I should’ve prolonged the reading to another person or two, again to make more people think that it’s impossible everyone’s a confederate.

Fourth trick: a book test with a newspaper from the table of one of the spectators. It got ripped in half multiple times, then I waded through the sea of knees and heads till I reached a half-decent girl and asked her to pick one of the torn-up papers. I dragged her up to the stage, asked her to read the paper for herself and choose a long word. She did, and I asked her to send out telepathically the first letter of the word, and for the audience to think of a letter. The idea (taken from a performance of Chuck Hickock) was to make the audience part of the effect, by getting at least a few people who received the right letter. Unfortunately, nobody got the first letter (Q, for heaven’s sake), which reduced the enthusiasm of the mentally-dyslectic audience. Eventually I wrote down the entire word on a big notepad and showed it to the audience.

Lesson: good trick, which people said they just couldn’t figure out how I did it. For next time, I should probably pick a word that begins with A, B or C – to make sure someone in the audience guesses the first letter.
Another lesson: I probably could’ve picked a better volunteer. The current one was quiet, reserved, and a bit apathetic. I should’ve looked for someone who was more of a smiley type.

Fifth trick: spoon bending. I called for a volunteer from the audience, asked her to hold out her hands, put a spoon in between and asked her to rub it. The spoon magically bent. Angles were horrible, though, so I had to do weird things with my body attempting to put the spoon in her hands without the audience getting a good view of it. After that I took another spoon from my pocket and bent it freely with one finger, until it broke apart. People were… uncaring. They couldn’t really hear my voice in some parts of the hall (no microphone, remember?), and many couldn’t see the spoon. *sigh* Besides, who cares? It’s just a spoon!
Lesson: probably to ditch the spoons for big-audience performances. They’re still nice up-front, though.

Sixth trick: key bending. I asked the audience for keys of their own to bend. This is one of the effects that works amazingly well on a small group, but went horribly wrong here. I got two keys from the audience, and they JUST WOULDN’T BEND. I was moving around like crazy, trying to pull time while my hands were working… and the damn things wouldn’t budge one bit. It never happened to me before, in more than ten times I did this piece to friends and strangers. You can imagine that the audience was less than enthusiastic after all the time pulling, to see that the keys bent just a little bit… and even that they couldn’t see because of the dark and the angles.
Lesson: I don’t really know. I should probably be more prepared, sweat less (should be solved in another performance or two) and know when to cut it short, if it doesn’t seem to work. Or maybe go to another guy or two if the first key doesn’t bend.

Seventh trick: Chevrull’s Pendulum, as a means of communicating with an all-powerful, all-knowing and infinite alien being called Roger. Worked OK. Nothing to be excited about.

Eighth trick: an amusing piece of magic by Corinda. I rattle six cubes in a cup and tell a spectator to count the sum of the dots on them. 21. He then counts cards in a pack which I give him, and looks at the 21st card – it’s a 5 hearts. He now needs to read the fifth word of the fifth chapter, and it turns out that it’s ‘prescpretivistic’… and that’s the word that’s hung on the wall since the beginning of the show!
Well, I thought it would be impressive and amusing, but people didn’t really understand the point. After all, the word was there all along, so what? In retrospect, I should’ve picked an easier word, and I should’ve had it written somewhere district, and unveil it myself at the proper time.
After the word, I explained how I did the trick – “I knew you would pick this word, because I knew you would choose card 5 hearts, which was the 21st card, because I forced the number on the cubes with my incredible mental powers!” that was a bit amusing, but wasn’t enough of a climax. I asked the spectator to look at the rest of the cards – and they were all with a big X on them as well. And it still wasn’t much of a climax.
Lesson: as above. Also, this was an effect where the lack of microphone really hurt. Such an intricate explanation – and not enough people could hear it clearly.

At this point I saw that the audience was losing concentration. An hour and ten minutes have passed by now, and I decided to finish by showing the amazing memory effect of Bob Cassidy, where I explain to people how they can remember an entire deck of cards in twenty seconds, and show them how I do it. This is an extremely impressive effect, but I somehow botched it. Me and the keepers of the cards could not go on stage since many people couldn’t see us. So we got down to the audience, where many others couldn’t see us anyway. I stood with my back to the table, in a horrible position, and couldn’t really keep up the drama. The show ended there, with me remembering all the cards except for two.

Overall: people had fun. Some because of the magics, and all because of the lecture, the jokes and the humor woven through the presentation. I could’ve done the effects much better, but I’m more aware now of the subtleties of appearing before an audience. I also realize that when speaking with an owner before the show, I should insist on some items – a microphone and a proper arrangement of lights and the audience. Otherwise, the show is doomed to be much less effective.

Am I sad it didn’t work out well? It’s not the best feeling, obviously, but many people came up to me and told me they enjoyed it immensely, so I’m not too bothered by it. I know that this was just try number 1, and I’ll improve vastly in the next few performances. I’m mostly happy about the amazing experience, and wanted to share all of it with you… and thank you for all the interesting advice I’ve been reading on this forum in the past month, as a silent reader.

If you actually managed to read it all, thank you for the effort and your time!

Brilliant, really useful tips. Should probably be in the miscellaneous area instead, but well done with your first show! And thank you very much for writing out such a detailed review of it, and giving such excellent advice.

Thanks. It's my pleasure to contribute some back to the forum. If any moderator chances to happen upon this report, he's welcome to move it to the appropriate section.

Thanks very much for sharing, it helps a lot for 'beginners' in performing like me to see and avoid difficult situations, or just to see that the first ones aren't as good as we hoped, but we're not alone ...

It was my pleasure putting the experience onto paper (well, virtual one, anyway). Always remember the microphone! :>

Well done I think for a first performance you did remarkably well and it's wonderful that you know that failing at first is a great learning opportunity. As with all arts, be it music, painting, running your going to fail at first it's just unfortunate that in magic and mentalism you have to fail in front of others, it can be quite painful at times and discourage many from perseveering and so I have every faith should you continue this interest you will suceed with it.
Btw, Im not sure if I understood about your Q and A routine- were you using cold reading in parts or saying that you were, because if you've learned cold reading in one month I am afraid I'm going to have to quit. Basic cold reading is easy and can be learned in a few hours, but to get it to a decent and skilled level takes so many, and I mean soooo many painful days of failing and looking like an idiot, but it pays of eventually. (I'm talking about the kind of cold reading you can use to tell someone the memory their thinking of e.t.c.) and it is a perfect example of that need for perseveerance.
On the subject of QandA effects, Corinda's subtlety about throwing out an unidentified embaressing (false) question is priceless. If you watch Derren Brown's QandA routine, you will see him actually using this principle. Personally, I don't use the one ahead principle with QandA effects, but reading Anneman always makes me go out and use it with a close up billet reading routine. QandA routines are massive topic, which Corinda covers a great deal about, but there are millions of subtleties which just complete the jigsaw puzzle scattered all over mentalism- I beleive it is something which if one masters, it can be a remarkably strong and irrifutable demonstration of mind reading, so I hope you continue to develope and practice because it can really pay off.
Another point, I have seen spoon bending get big reactions from audiences, for example you need only look on youtube and banachek's silverwear routine so we have another example of perseveerance, but I think you still did well given the enviroment. (Cassidy does make a great point that the pro who has built a reputation actually does a much easier job than the beginer who must establish himself in difficult conditions and win an audience over).
So thanks for the post and getting it down on 'paper' or at least cyber paper. I strongly believe that the best way to learn is by going out there (obviously one needs reading and study and practice) and performing and analysing what went well and why and what went wrong and I think there is something everyone can learn from what you have written, in a case of learing from someone elses sucesses and failings. Also, I want to be proffessor and lecturer and have done for a while, the idea of using mentalism and magic to compliment that (psychology/ linguistics would be my expertees) is something that has been going through my head a few times, so this post was a nice surprise.

Finally I cannot submit this without telling you how much you need to track down psychological subtleties by Banachek. It is the little things which pack a big punch and can convince your audience you're the real deal, you will cherish your beloved copy. I wish you the best of luck on the foot of this journey into a very bizzarre world of magic and mentalism, and may you continue to cherish and study Corinda throughout that journey! You already know something which even certain people who have been doing magic for years don't know- that it is about entertainment, I think all magicians should be first and foremost entertainers and be able to hold an audience without even doing any magic and you know about that, so well done!

Thanks, Sam. I don't like to fail too much, but I agree that it's a prerequisite if you want to learn to do magic. Luckily for me, I had my entire lab to practice on... and usually fail a few times before things actually started rolling.

In the QandA routine, I was using the one-ahead method, which required I only know one of the billets beforehand. I pretended (and apparently managed to convince quite a few people) that I was doing cold reading. i.e. if the billet said "I have an evil cellphone", then I would say - "It's something material, right? And it belongs to you, yes, I can see that very clearly. Something large? Small? Ah, small it is, then. And useful, too, but you dislike it in a way. That's about as accurate as I can get in this little time." then I would open the billet and 'read' the original sentence. The secret was in being vague yet pointed at the same time, and never grasping the whole sentence - just key words and emotions. After all, whenever somebody succeeds 100%, he's a faker for sure, and everybody know that.
So no, not a real cold reading by far. I wish I could do that. Maybe I will, someday. And in any case, I still have some nine chapters of Corinda to read, not to mention Anneman and Banachek's books which you recommended.

You're right about the spoons. I saw a mentalist do that some seven years ago, and was very impressed. I guess they're still relevant, but I need to work on the drill and the angles of view, and most importantly: lose the shame at playing such a silly trick on the audience. I still have that shame in me, and it's really holding me back. Damn conscience :>

It's nice to find another scientist here, with aspirations at tenure and professorship. I admit I wasn't expecting that. I find that the mentalism tricks can become immensely valuable in my presentations of scientific topics, especially ones dealing with the brain and the ways we think. It is then that the tricks become almost impossible to detect, as the audience is certain I'm a respected scientist (which I am). When I'm telling an audience member to think of a number, and then giving him the card with that number on it, they never suspect a swami. And it drives the point home at how expected we are. It's fun to finish a lecture like that :>

By the way, how would you recommend that I lose that shame which holds me back from lying through my teeth and claim all sort of impossible abilities? In my real life (without the stage) I am loathe to lie, and I carry that hold-back with me to the stage. I have no doubt that it diminishes the effects greatly. Any recommendations on that aspect?

Yes, of course, you have something which we diagnose generally as 'magician's guilt'. Essentially it is assuming that the audience knows or suspects the secret ebhind the trick and the guilt at tricking them. I have never felt guilty about tricking them, but I certainly have felt akward during doing the 'secret move' or whatever, and I suspect this is what you have, but if you just generally feel guilty about lying, then I cannot offer any help. I don't really have any solid advice, other than to believe in what you are doing. It is simple- but the best advice always is, and I know even if you can't fully take that on board, during the course of your practice you will most certainly learn it yourself, which is the only way to really take it one board- but believe in what you are doing. Just perform it with the most conviction and belief in what you are doing. I once did a simple trick on an amateur card magician and he caught me at the top change, but commended me for my conviction. Another book to add to your reading list is 'Magic and Showmanship'. It has a good deal about acting and 'silent script' which is invaluable. For example, when I am using a swami, I attract attention to the pencil (Thank you Corinda) by loosing it or dropping or using an ikea pencil (Thank you somewhere on tm) so that it is memorable and then I have someone selected, I generally find myself in close up and 'parlour' situations, so I adapt my material accordingly and generally don't have as much need for prooving a fair selection (thanks for posting because I don't often do stage work and now I know not what to do with the swami selection and also on this digression, I wasn't saying you failed in case that's what you thought) but back onto whatever I was saying....
I have someone infront of me and I have my pencil. I stare at them in the eyes, I maybe ask them a random question, maybe look at their hands, and then write down carrot-7 on a piece of paper and get them to hold it. I ask them to think of a word but to change their mind a few times. They visualise it, they shout it in their heads, they get a memory they have with relating to this word if they can in their mind. I ask them is there a 't or a d' somewhere in there? If it's a hit I pretend I knew, if it wasn't I don't sweat it I take my pencil and I say to myself in my head 'they are thinking of guitar' and I mime out that. I then get them to name it for everyone, so they don't change their minds. I swami it on. Even though it is quite simple, I convince skeptics with this, because of my conviction. Why would I be asking them questions, looking at their hands, doing all this strange behaviour if their wasn't a reason. I believe that what I am doing has some impact, I don't know how I can take it on, but I belive it in the same way I believe I have brown hair. The audience follows along.
This neatly leads me on to talking about the cold reading. It is certainly a good thing to give your audience a supposed and false method of how you are doing it. I want my audience to believe I am using cold reading, body language, suggestion and so on but I never explicitly say 'I am using cold reading, I am using suggestion, I am using body language'. Max Maven paraphrased Pascal and said that we should let the spectators and audience discover something for themselves instead of telling it to them. It is a philosophy that stretches outside of the realms of magic and into every day life, I first learnt this (which leads me back to what I was saying about discovering it for yourself) I was studying advocacy for a competition and I was analysing the wonderful film '12 angry men' and I realised that if you want to make a point well, you infer it. You do not make it explicit or even let the words of the point you are making leave your mouth you let your point occur naturally within the mind of your audience so it feels like their thought, their deduction that way they are ten times more likley to believe it. It works, when I was being a lawyer in a mock trial, the witness made a stupid point which contradicted herself from earlier. I just paused, there was a silence in the room and I moved on. I let the contradiction register. I won the case. Now, this applies equally to magic and mentalism. If I want my audience to believe I am using cold reading it does no harm in telling them explicitly, but If I infer it it is more beliveable. I'll start off 'You have a scar on your knee and you don't like being told what to do or taking unsolicited advice from people whose opinion you niether care about nor is it valid' Which will allow anyone who knows anything about cold reading to clock onto the fact I am supposedly using cold reading and in a similar process to how you do it, I reveal information about a spectator. I have let it happen in the audiences mind so they realise 'He's fishing/ watching body language'.
Now this leads us to the topic of precision. There was a post on this about a week ago, where I gave my opinions, I can't be bothered to type them out again so voila:

Quote:
predict something believable

I have been giving this approach some thought of late. There seem to be two main sort of schools- those who get everything 100% and those who purposley make slight errors. The latter seems more 'believable' to the theorist, but to someone who actually performs realises that this is not always the case- you can still be believable and have a high accuracy rate- it's just getting the balance right. Paul Daniels (I think it was him?) was saying in an interview somewhere that he was asked to predict the lottery- but he purposley got a few wrong and they immediatley said 'he can't do it'. For example Your point about switching- that by being accurate the method is revealed isn't always the case- when I first started out using billets I was afraid of getting it 100% because I thought they would think 'he must of looked at it'. I restrict my billet work in performances because a real mind reader wouldn't always need stuff to be written down, but equally a real mind reader wouldn't give it any thought and as long as what has been written apparently could not be known, it is clean. So, yes, by making a few errors it does enhance beliveability but making errors is not the only way, there are 10000 probably more ways of making it believable, but ultimatley you are trying to entertain and astound.
I used to make to many errors on purpose and looking back, it certainly made it less impressive.

On the subject of the one ahead system- the problem is that it that once you adopt the role of the mind reader, the spectators expect that they will think of a word and you will tell them- naturally when you inturupt that and say 'ok, what was the word'- the general response is 'you want me to tell you the word?' even if it is perfectly innocent. It naturally raises the idea that you are changing the prediction. I do a card routine with just thought of cards using the one ahead system which uses marked cards- because it appears as it would in real mind reading, despite the fact marked cards and the one ahead system are possibly the most exposed tricks, I have never been challenged. You just have to find a way in which you don't have to ask them what they wrote- or create an enviroment in which it is perfectly natural. I'm sure you could encorporate the one ahead system into an effect about a game of word association if you tried. That way it's perfectly acceptable to say the word- in fact integral to the game.

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Btw, page 346 of 13 steps has a very nice trick from fogel about stooges and q & a routines using the one ahead system.

Uh... Sam? Are you sure about that page number? I believe you meant page 346.

I see Paul is showing off.

Yes... that's what I meant. Editing now. xD

Sorry about the long time away. It was a long week, and I took up on your offer and have been reading Banachek's Psychological Subtleties. I owe you one - it's amazing. Naked mentalism at it's best. I've used some of the tricks there to amaze and astound my students.
One of the strongest effects there is the Card Riffling effect on chapter 8, where you force a card on the spectator without him actually having to touch the deck. In fact, I've found out it's a bit too strong for a starting trick in informal situations. It makes me look like a magician, which as Cassidy said, takes the magic out of mentalism.

I find it hard to reply to all the points we've discussed so far, but I'll just concede the fact that I do indeed have the Magician's Guilt. I find it hard to lie to the audience mostly because I feel I will be comitted then, and if they find out the method (which seems easy enough from my learned point of view) they'll go berserk over my a$$. I suppose this will go away the more I do the magicks and don't get caught, but for now it remains a problem of mine. But as I said - I get better :>

As for the One Ahead / Cold Reading method, I have a performance next week in which I plan to repeat it. My basic plan is to find out the name of one person who wrote a note, in advance, do a first REAL cold reading on him first which will probably be medicore and shallow, and then move on to supply better and better readings until the last spectator's note is being deduced fully by the cold reading.

That's the method I'm going to try, which involves no stooges. It's a bit of a bad start with the first fellow, but you gotta start somewhere...

Again, thanks for all the great advice, and setting a lead to the other books and to Banachek.

The next book on your list then is Anneman. Anything you can get your hands on really. A billet reader who used almost exclusivley the one ahead system is discussed. Also, make sure you have read chapter11 on q and a effects by Corinda, It does assume knowledge from previous chapters, but it is nonetheless something you MUST read before doing a Q and A act.

Added to the list.

It's gonna be a long week :>